Testing of weapon sights has required either actual firing on a real weapon, or use of drop shock machines or impact producing machines coupled to vibration slip plates and/or electrodynamic shakers. Live fire testing is expensive, time consuming and requires very specialized facilities. Drop shock machines and electrodynamic shakers are expensive and only available in specialized environmental test laboratories. Furthermore, neither of these methods can adequately reproduce specific shock time histories of pyrotechnic discharge, nor can they produce them at the high cyclic rate of fire (e.g., as high as approximately 700-950 rounds per minute) that are characteristic of a pyrotechnic energized weapon operating in full-auto mode.
The gunfire shock of a pyrotechnic energized weapon that uses energy provided by discharge of a pyrotechnic charge to energize action of a bolt carrier assembly (e.g., an M16/AR15/M4 weapon) consists of two shock pulses. FIG. 1 shows a typical longitudinal shock time history graph 10 for one set of live fire gunfire shock events in such a weapon. Longitudinal refers to shocks along an axis extending substantially parallel to a longitudinal axis of the weapon's barrel. The impulse of the first of the two shock pulses (i.e., the first shock pulse 12) is in a net rearward direction, and the impulse of the second shock pulses (i.e., the second shock pulse 14) is in a net forward direction with respect to the sight orientation. The first shock pulse 12 is due to the actual pyrotechnic shock event of cartridge (i.e., pyrotechnic) ignition and the impulse of the bullet (i.e., projectile) accelerating out of the weapon's barrel. The second shock pulse 14 is due to the inertial translation, impact and locking of the bolt carrier group into the weapon's barrel extension as the next round is chambered (i.e., bolt open/closure shock events).
Therefore, an apparatus that simulates (e.g., nearly duplicates or closely approximates) a shock time history of a weapon without requiring discharge of a pyrotechnic for doing so overcomes drawbacks associated with conventional approaches for testing and analyzing weapon shock resulting from pyrotechnic discharge and associated operation of mechanical components of the weapon (e.g., a bolt carrier assembly), thereby making such apparatus advantageous, desirable and useful.